In the 15th century, Johann Schiltberger recorded one of the first European sightings of the Mongolian Wild horses in the journal of his trip to Mongolia as a prisoner of the Mongol Khan.
The horse is named after Russian General Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839--1888) (the spelling of the horse breed as "Przewalski" derives from the Polish spelling of the name. He was an explorer and naturalist who described the horse in 1881, after having gone on an expedition to find it, based on rumours of its existence.
Many of these horses were captured around 1900 by Carl Hagenbeck and placed in zoos. As noted above, about twelve to fifteen reproduced and formed today's population.
